A pretty big day-Expedition Dust day 38

I woke up just as the sun was rising and opened my door (aka unzipped the tent) to get a better view. I wanted to roll back over and keep sleeping, but I didn’t. I got up and started packing up my things. I deconstructed one of my radix mixed berry breakfasts because I wanted to put all the blueberries in with the last of my muesli I also added dried mango and apricots. Before we both got on our bikes I sent two images on the sat phone to my dad showing the broken trailer and chain tensioner. after that we climbed onto our bikes and headed off down the hill and onto the road. To begin with I was feeling a lack of motivation to ride, I was just feeling a bit flat. There was nothing I could do about it so I just put my head down and started spinning. About 2 hours into the day I heard a rumble from behind. It was a convoy of super cat military  vehicles and the dust cloud it was making was crazy! They came past one after another the soldiers all acknowledging us with a friendly nod or a wave. As the the second to last truck went past I noticed a guy waving his arm off, It took me a moment to realise that it was one of my good mates! I will call him ‘Brad‘ to keep him anonymous. The convoy came to a halt and Brad came over to me to say hello, what an absolutely random place to meet. It was wonderful. Dylan and I chatted to Brad and the army boys for about an hour while they unloaded some dirt bikes and ate lunch. Just before they left three of them came over with a-rat pack of food with 6 meals 4 blocks of chocolate and two bags of m&ms. Back in the trucks they took a hard right and headed off down a 4wd only track. As for us, we continued straight with a few extra treats.

The track got very hard to ride along because the sand was deep and the corrugations are the devil. I can move faster than Dylan so I rode ahead about 400m in front. We spent most of the day riding apart as I think it’s important to have a bit of your own space to decompress. I didn't stop for lunch today as we had spent so much time resting and talking to the soldiers that i didn't think we needed to. The ground was getting worse as we ventured into the desert. I was going across corrugations that were easily 15cm deep, this track is so hard on the body. I pulled to the side of the track to watch some camels go past. I took a wonerful photo of them crossing through the long grass.

I wanted to do 70 km today so we pushed on. 25 minutes later I looked back to make sure Dylan was still following me. I spotted his light so thought he must of been cruising along following me at his own pace. The track got supper gnarly, I pushed for about 30 min before I stoped to wait for Dylan. After 30min he still wasn't around the bend because I hadn't seen his light yet. At 40min I decided to get of my bike and walk back to see if something was wrong. I  totally misjudged how far I had gone. After an hour of walking I found Dylan in the tent asleep. You can imagine after walking back to try help him and finding his asleep in the tent I wasn’t very happy. In fact I got quite angry and said what the hells going on. I was so annoyed that he had just stoped even though he hadn't caught up to me. Dylan was probably annoyed at me too because I had said we would stop at 5 and that’s what he did!

Dylan took the tent down and rode to where my bike and gear was, about a 25 min ride. I just walked off back to my bike. I felt so mean and when he caught up I apologised to him for the way I  treated him and told him I would do my best to work on my communication skills. We remade our camp site at 2320 hours. I was sore and tired because of my 10 km walk I had just done. We set up the tent and made a fire. This spot has a water pump so we can use as much water as we want. I was so happy about that. I made three of the army meals for dinner. They're not small but I was so hungry and finished them all before getting into bed.